MBA2058 Must Read: Zero to Sold by Arvid Kahl

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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar RMBA Show. Powerful business lessons delivered daily every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is a must read episode.

On our must read episodes.

I share with you a book that I have read that has influenced me. I share with you its takeaways, its.

Insights and why you should read it too.

Today's must read is Zero to Sold. By Arvid Kahl Arvid Kahl is the founder of a bootstrapped self funded software as a service business called Feedback Panda. Arvid built a strong software business and sold it and walks you through the process in this book Zero to Sold so you can do the same. He took his software company from $0 a month to $55,000 in reoccurring revenue every single month in just two years. He now teaches everything he's learned along the way on his website, the bootstrappedfounder.com I've been a follower of Arvid Media, Twitter in particular for some time. I took his Twitter course which led me to his book Zero to Sold which I'll be discussing in today's Must Read. So why did I choose this book? Why do I classify as a must read? Because it's a very good tactical guide on how to build your own self funded bootstrapped software business. There's very little fluff in this book. Arvid shares his story along the way. A lot of his tips are rooted in practicality and real life examples. This is why the book is so impactful. Because when you read it, not only are you inspired to do the same thing that he did, but you actually get the feeling or the confidence. Then you could do the same. Can't wait to get into all my favorite insights and takeaways from Zero to Salt. So let's get into it.

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Books are written by business experts that have studied business, have tons of case studies from other businesses, have interviewed so many other entrepreneurs. But the kind of business books I like are the ones that speak from experience. And that's exactly what Zero Sold is all about. Arvid actually walks the talk and shares his story of how he built his own bootstrap software business and sold it. If you're a new entrepreneur and you're looking to start a software business, I would consider this a must read. You have to read this book. It's essential. It's going to help you a ton, especially when you're getting started. Now what if you're not starting a software business? There's still a lot to learn from here, especially if you are self funding your business. If you're bootstrapping it, which most of our listeners are, you're going to get a lot from his strategies, his tactics, his mentality, how he approaches business, and how you can prepare your business to be ready to be sold at one point at some time in the future. From day one being ready to there's some really big ideas in this book. One that really stands out is the idea of what do you build your business around? If you're going to build a software business, you should definitely build one around a major problem. An audience has a problem that really is irritating, a problem that really stops people from progressing or is costing them a lot of pain and anguish or money. This makes everything so much easier. I know from experience, and I know this because it's super hard when you're trying to sell a product or service that people really don't really need. They might think it's cool or they like it, but if they don't need it, if they don't have a burning desire to have a problem solved, you're going to have a hard time selling this product. It's going to be moving a boulder up the hill. You want the opposite. You want it to be so simple and so easy for you to sell because people are begging for it. So starting there is a great place to kind of form the content or the concept of your business, of your product itself. What are your customers or potential customers desperate for? Another theme in this book is building your business to be sold one day, from day one. So you're making sure that your business is ready to be handed over to somebody else at any time. That means documenting processes, documenting your app, making it simple for you to maybe hand over, access, having all your financials in order, knowing your numbers. This is a very powerful position to be in because if somebody makes you an offer at any time along your journey, you have nothing to prepare. You're already prepared for sale, you're ready to go. You can give them all your information and it makes things a whole lot smoother for you because sometimes you need to make a quick decision. You need to make that process as quickly as possible so you can close on that sale. And the other concept that I really love in this book is this idea that there is no finish line. There's no finish line to SaaS, there's no finish line to software. I got given this advice from a friend of mine and fellow business owner, Noah Kagan, the founder of AppSumo and Sumo.com when I got started with Webinar Ninja, he told me, my best advice to you is, Omar, know that there's no finish line. Okay? There's always going to be something to build, to improve, to optimize. Knowing that, don't think that you need to get everything done tomorrow or right now. Build at your own pace. Improve methodically, slowly. Don't overwhelm yourself, and at the same time, don't peg your hopes that that one feature that you're about to build is gonna change everything for your business. It's actually a bunch of small features in my experience. It's a bunch of moving in the right direction type of decisions that really make the difference. So I wanna go through some of my favorite takeaways on these topics that are discussed in this book. And that really stood out to me. When it comes to the problem you're solving, Arvid really pushes to the idea that you need to have product. Not a nice to have or that looks cool or not even something that can maybe make them feel better or do better. You want something that solves a problem. You want to sell the aspirin, the painkiller, not the vitamin. When you have a headache, all you can think about is getting rid of your headache. You are desperate for something that can help you. That's the kind of product you want to create. Now, vitamins are cool and all, but your life is not going to drastically change from one day to the next or one moment to the next if you don't take your vitamins. Okay? Theoretically, you might think, okay, I'll take my vitamins every day and my, my health will be great in the long term. And that could be true, but unfortunately that's not enough driving force to get the amount of customers you need to have a successful business. You need something that's going to change their state, their life. They're going to say thank you for this thing that solves this problem. I was traveling the other day and I actually forgot to pack my aspirin or any ibuprofen or painkillers. And my wife Nicole had a headache, okay? In that moment, her head is pounding, okay? We had a bias at the hotel that we were at at their gift shop. And at that moment I wasn't even looking at price. I know that I was going to get ripped off. I know that that is going to expensive purchase compared to the supermarket. But because she's in pain, I'm not going to sit there and think about it. Now, if I forgot my vitamin C and I didn't pack it, there's a good chance I probably wouldn't have bought vitamin C at the gift shop. Because I was like, hey, I'll live without vitamin C for a couple of days. Another thing that Arvid talks about in this book is finding a problem or creating a product that's really sticky, that's hard to opt out. They would like to opt out, but they just can't because their life, their business, their whole, whole existence is based on that. This is why real estate is such a big market. This is why banks are happy to give out mortgages, because most people are going to pay their mortgage. This is why website hosting is a huge business because people are not going to close down their website. They'll cut costs somewhere else. If your product allows your customer to do what they want for a living, make money, provide their service, you're in a good, good business because your customer is not going to cancel you because that's how they continue to grow. Now if you have a nice to have product, they'll cancel you to cut some costs if things get tough or they're on a down market. A good example of this in software is email marketing service. Everybody has an email list or trying to grow their email list in online business. They're not going to cancel that service because they have forms on their website, they're collecting emails. It's how they generate leads, it's how they bring in just a part of the backbone of their business. They will not cancel this service because they simply can't. There's no real alternative. Maybe they can go to a different competitor. It's a big pain to do that, therefore they're just going to stick it out. This is a great business to be in. This is a great business to build, a great product to build. Another great sign that you're in a good business to build or a good product to build is your current customers already have a solution to the problem, but the solution is just not good enough. This means that your customers are aware of the problem, they experience a pain, and they're trying to find a way to come up with a solution. They're solution oriented. They came up with some sort of maybe hodgepodge, Frankenstein way to figure out this problem or to solve this problem, but most of the time it's a pain in the butt. So if your product makes it simpler for them to solve this pain they're in, because, hey, they've already recognized as a problem, they've already attempted to have a solution. If your solution is better, more efficient, more cost effective, they're going to jump all over it. Now, when it comes to creating your solution, Arvid talks about make sure you're not creating friction in your solution. Meaning sometimes we don't realize how our solution works in the day or in the workflow of your actual customer, you might be causing more problems than you're solving. So just understand your customer very well and how they would incorporate your solution and in their work, in their life. Arvid rounds off the book by emphasizing that your product, what you sell, is not the business. Your system is your business. And we talk about this a lot on the podcast that systems are valuable assets they're what people are actually buying when they're buying your company. When you have a system to run your business, to run every function in your business, every action, from talking to your customers to processing refunds, to creating new features, to promoting and marketing your product, if there's a system in place that's documented, this is worth gold. You can actually sell the system and not the business. But if you're selling your business and it doesn't have a system, they're basically going to buy a business that's going to give them a lot of headaches. They got to do a lot of work to make it happen. If your business is not that appealing, they're just not going to buy it because it's too hard to kind of take over. Read more about building a system in Arvid's book Zero to Sold. I can't go into too much detail in today's episode because it would be three hours long, but you're going to get a lot of value about the value of building a system.

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Now, I gotta say that much of Arvid's book is talking about how to build a software as a service business, how to sell it, how to cultivate value for that business. There's a lot of great examples for a software business, but again, there is a lot to take away even if you're not building a software business. But if you are, you're going to get a lot of gold, including how to allow your product to evolve. How do you know what to double down on and what to basically kill off in your product? What are the features or elements of your product that can allow you to grow explosively? What are your customers saying? What are they doing? How do you track what they're doing? All the tools and all the methods are mentioned in the book. Then Arvid close off the book on how to sell the business, how to prepare for sale, how to negotiate a good price, how to evaluate if you have a good buyer or not and what to share and what not to share with a potential buyer. A lot of critical and important information is shared in this book about selling your business. That stage is very critical. What you do and don't do is very important and you got to get it right because you really have one shot at it. Once you sell your business, you can't sell it again. There you have it. I highly recommend you pick up 0 sold by Arvid call One of the best all around A to Z. Best books I've seen on creating a bootstrap software business and selling it one day. It's well written, it's helpful, it's light, it's encouraging, it's upbeat. It's a must read. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 on VA Show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Make sure you hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app. By the way, if you're listening on Spotify, hit follow and give us a star rating. We would love to get a rating from you to improve our visibility and it's a good way for you to support the show if you like. Thanks so much for that in advance. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Creating a business, growing it, making it successful, and selling it can be a long journey. A lot of us just want to do and implement and get to work. This book is a chance for you to take a step back and see the whole process from A to Z and get your head around it so you understand, okay, this is what I'm getting into. This is what I have to do to be successful. This is one of the things I got to focus on. I feel that a lot of CEOs, a lot of founders, a lot of leaders, a lot of business owners don't take the time to think, to wrap their head around what is important, what's not important, so they can execute and make decisions based on that. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you. I'll see you then. Take care.

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